What Burns Within

by Sandra Ruttan

  “Just crackpots and dead ends,” Tain said. “We’ll be getting more of the same when this hits the news.”

  Hawkins kept his gaze on Daly. “You can have Tain assist, but I don’t think it’s in the best interest of this department—”

  “What about the best interest of this case?” Daly’s eyes pinched with uncharacteristic anger. “Tain has been working in conjunction with Burnaby. He knows all the particulars. Pulling him off—”

  “I didn’t say to pull him off.”

  “No, just have him take a backseat so that Burnaby will think we softballed them, gave them a body just to shut them up because we don’t take finding dead kids on our patch seriously.”

  Hawkins pointed at Daly. “Julie Darrens and Isabella Bertini may have gone missing from Burnaby, but Julie was found here, in Coquitlam, and now a child’s been snatched from within our borders. I want our department handling this case.”

  “Then Tain will take the lead.”

  The two men stood staring at each other for a moment, until Daly’s phone rang and he grabbed it. “Yes. No, I…Thank you.”

  He hung up the phone and leaned against his arms, his hands planted firmly on the desk in front of him before he looked up again. “Industrial area just south of the Trans Canada Highway, right on the Fraser River. Not far from the fairgrounds where Taylor Brennen went missing. Another suspected arson fire.”

  For a moment the room was silent, Hawkins and Daly still locked in a match of visual chicken, waiting to see who would blink first.

  It was Hawkins who turned, glanced at Tain, then looked back at Daly. “I sure as hell hope you know what you’re doing.”

  He crossed the room, pulled the door open and slammed it behind him.

  Constable Craig Nolan was familiar with the image of his partner, all business, from the straight skirt to the pressed shirt, straight brown hair clipped back in a ponytail looking like it knew better than to dare fall out of place, the touch of makeup that somehow emphasized the icy eyes.

  She stopped at the steps to the house and turned to look at him. “You should let me handle this.”

  Craig unclenched his jaw. “Did I miss the memo?”

  Her forehead wrinkled for a second. Lori Price was as pushy as she was tall, and she met Craig’s gaze steadily.

  “The one about your promotion, putting you in charge,” he said.

  Lori folded her arms across her chest. “It might be better for her if she deals with a woman. I didn’t know you were so touchy.”

  Craig shook his head as he watched his partner turn, march up the steps, pause, then yank the door open. He counted to ten before he followed her silently, clenching his fists.

  “I already told them,” the low, hollow voice murmured from just beyond the hallway where Craig stood.

  “Yes, but I need you to tell me now.” Lori’s voice failed to sound sympathetic. Instead, it sounded pushy. As usual.

  Her words were met with silence.

  “Mrs. Parks, it really would be best—”

  “No. I don’t think so.”

  Craig heard movement, which told him that either Mrs. Parks was preparing to flee or that Lori was trying to corner her. He walked into the living room.

  Mrs. Parks was standing, but Lori towered over her. Craig’s partner looked like she was ready to tackle Mrs. Parks if the woman tried to leave.

  Craig stopped just inside the room. Mrs. Parks looked at him and blinked.

  “For a second I thought you were Carl. Except your hair’s a bit longer.”

  A quick glance at the prominent wedding photo on the mantel showing Mrs. Parks and a blond, fit man was all Craig needed. “Your husband?”

  She nodded. “Three years. He’s at work.”

  “Would you like us to phone him, have him come home?”

  Mrs. Parks nodded again. She sank back down on the sofa across the coffee table from where Lori Price stood, arms now crossed.

  “Perhaps you could locate her husband.” Craig glanced at Lori. Her eyes pinched partially shut, and her nostrils flared. He turned his back to her, approached Mrs. Parks slowly and knelt down until he was below eye level with her. When he finally heard Lori march out of the room he spoke. “Is there anything else we can get for you, Mrs. Parks?”

  “Cindy.”

  Craig frowned, glancing back at the photos for a clue. “Cindy?”

  “Call me Cindy. Please.”

  “Okay. Is there anything else we can do, Cindy?”

  She continued sitting rigidly, her hands clasped together on her lap, her face long and cold, without a trace of a spark in her eyes. Then she lifted a trembling hand to wipe away an unbidden tear that had escaped, before tucking her blond hair back behind her ear. She looked at Craig. “You can find the man who did this to me.”

  Craig swallowed. He felt like he’d been punched in the gut, winded. The look in her dark eyes sent a chill down his spine.

  How’s she supposed to look? What do you know about how it feels to be raped?

  “We’re going to do everything we can to catch him and put him away, but I’m not going to lie. This won’t be easy.”

  Her face didn’t move, but her gaze shifted to the right, as though something on that side of the room had caught her attention. Then she took a deep breath and looked him in the eyes. “You need me to tell you what happened.”

  He nodded.

  “Carl got a call just before four pm.”

  “From his work?”

  “From the fire department. He’s a volunteer.” Cindy Parks leaned back against the sofa, pulling her cardigan tight as she wrapped her arms around her body.

  Craig eased himself onto the couch across from her, listening as she told her story.

  Constable Ashlyn Hart parked her vehicle, the sting of smoke already burning her eyes. She flashed her ID and ducked under the barrier. With the spate of arson fires in the area lately the police weren’t taking any chances. They were being cautious about protecting the scenes.

  Not that it had done much good. Officially no leads. Arsons were notoriously hard to bring to trial, and so far their arsonist hadn’t given them much to work with. That was the reason she was handling every scene personally. She had to find a different way to pinpoint the culprit.

  “Maybe we should get you some gear, have you work out of our station.”

  She looked up and offered the firefighter who’d spoken a smile as she accepted a helmet from him. Ashlyn recognized Adrian Vaughan, the man under the layers of soot, but he’d barely stopped to offer the remark and hat before he disappeared again. She watched him move toward the thick plume of smoke billowing from the building. Flames were already licking the exterior from windows on the upper floors.

  “Not much we can do now but hope to contain it.”

  She turned. Paul Quinlan, the battalion chief, was standing beside her. “Arson?” she asked.

  “What color’s that smoke?”

  Dense dark clouds swirled out of every opening she could see. She’d been getting an education in fire ever since she got this assignment, but Ashlyn still hadn’t learned everything. “And black smoke means what?”

  “Petroleum-based accelerant. Likely gas.”

  Gas. Not too helpful. Only about a thousand local places where someone could get their hands on that.

  Paul passed her the object he was holding. “We found it on the door, just like before. Could this help you?”

  Ashlyn pulled a bag from her pocket, wrapped the angel quickly, then put it in the trunk of her car. “Generic materials found in hundreds of stores in the province, virtually untraceable, handmade. We haven’t turned up anything so far.”

  “What the hell?” Paul raced forward, toward the door. She tried to follow him. Other firefighters started running, and one grabbed her arm.

  “Stay there.” He glared at her as he backed away, watching until she stopped moving before he turned around. The man disappeared amidst the sea of turnout gear each firefig
hter wore for protection on the job.

  Ashlyn moved her head from side to side and up and down until she could see through the smoke and men to what had caught Quinlan’s attention.

  A firefighter was racing down the front steps carrying a child.

  The paramedic repositioned the stethoscope and paused. It had been at least twenty minutes since the girl had been pulled from the building, and the paramedic’s shoulders sagged. She shook her head.

  “Fuck.” The firefighter who’d found the girl turned and kicked a garbage can. His dirt-streaked fingers clenched into a fist beside his head as he walked away.

  Ashlyn pulled plastic gloves from her pocket, stepped forward and knelt beside the body. She tossed the helmet she’d been given aside. The girl’s hair was darker than hers. Careful not to touch her unnecessarily, Ashlyn surveyed the victim visually until she got to her hands. Then she reached into her jacket pocket, pulled out a pen and used it to nudge the loose shirtsleeve up, revealing black and purple skin mixed with partially healed wounds. The gashes and bruises stretched out like an overgrown tattoo, covering the girl’s arm.

  A voice cut into Ashlyn’s thoughts from above her. “Can’t you cover her up and get her out of here before the reporters start shooting photos?”

  She shook her head. “This is a murder investigation now.”

  “For Christ’s sake, she’s already been moved. What difference does it make?”

  Purple shirt, green pants…It kept playing through Ashlyn’s head as she studied the girl’s face. There was a shiny metal pendant around the girl’s neck, and she reached for it.

  “What the hell do you think you’re doing?” A different voice this time. One she’d describe as demanding, unapologetic…

  Familiar.

  “My job.” She pulled out her ID as she turned around. For a moment she crouched, jaw open, then dropped her hand and put her badge away. He was tall, athletic, dark hair, a face of stone, and he never let anyone call him by his first name. She frowned as she realized she didn’t even know his first name herself. That was the kind of distance he put between himself and even the people he worked closely with, but she knew he had a warm smile when he let his guard down and was a good person. “Jesus.”

  “Well, I am back from the dead.”

  “Your penance is over?”

  One curt nod. “Sorry. Didn’t know you’d been called out on this.”

  “I wasn’t. I’m working the arsons.”

  The skin between his brows puckered. “Wasn’t that Robinson’s case?”

  “Not anymore. He died.” Ashlyn was still crouching between him and the girl, obscuring Tain’s view.

  She almost couldn’t believe it was him. They’d worked together once, on a tough case. One she tried hard not to think about. At the end of the day they’d solved it, but it seemed like Tain had managed to piss off every senior officer from Vancouver to Halifax in the process. It had taken a toll on him.

  It had taken a toll on all of them. Maybe that’s why she’d found herself making excuses when it was over, picking up the phone and setting it down without dialing the number…

  Willing herself to forget. Willing herself to believe they all had forgotten and that nobody wanted to hear from her because it would bring it all back.

  “What have you got?”

  “Likely the reason for the fire.” She stood up and stepped back so that she wasn’t in his way.

  “Purple shirt, green pants…” Tain’s eyes turned down at the corners. With him, the expressions were all subtle, but she knew him well enough to see it.

  “And a charm on a necklace.”

  “Shit.” His fingers pushed through his short dark hair and into his skull. “It’s Isabella Bertini.”

  Tain leaned back against the truck. “It never gets any easier, does it?”

  Ashlyn shook her head. She was still reeling from the shock of seeing him, wondering about so many things but not knowing how to ask. “But you’d better pull yourself together.”

  His eyes narrowed.

  “There are uniforms all over this place. Don’t you have an image to maintain?”

  The ghost of a smile flitted across his lips, but it failed to reach his eyes. She made the mistake of turning away from him too soon, jumping as his hand smacked her backside.

  He leaned toward her as he walked by. “Just protecting my reputation.”

  “Smartass.”

  “Yours is pretty tight. You been working out?”

  She pointed a finger at him. “I swear I’ll break—”

  “Hey, is that the guy who found her?”

  Ashlyn nodded. She sprinted ahead of Tain.

  “This is my case, Ashlyn.”

  “Carl, we need to have a word with you.” She ignored Tain as she took the lead.

  “About the girl?”

  “We need to know where you found her,” Tain said. “If there was anything near the body, anything you remember at all.”

  Carl paused and stared at Tain for a moment.

  “And you are?”

  “Constable Tain.” He pulled out his ID and held it up as the firefighter removed his helmet and wiped his brow with the side of his hand, a futile gesture that only resulted in smearing soot across his forehead.

  “I thought you were working the arsons,” the firefighter said to Ashlyn.

  “Tain’s working the child abductions.”

  His eyes widened. “You mean that’s the girl? The one they’ve been looking for? Shit.”

  “We need you to keep that to yourself, Carl. We need to notify her parents before the press gets wind of it, okay?” Ashlyn said.

  Carl took a breath and nodded. “Sure. Sure, I understand.”

  “Anything you can tell us could be critical to the investigation,” Tain said.

  Carl shook his head. “I was just concentrating on getting her out, you know? I thought she might be alive.”

  “Where did you find her?” Ashlyn asked.

  “Fourth floor. Back right-hand corner, lying on a table by the window. I just grabbed her and started running. There was smoke pouring out the window. I almost didn’t see her when I went in there.”

  “The window was open?” Tain asked.

  Carl froze, then shrugged. “It must have been.”

  “Any chance you guys broke the glass, trying to get in off a ladder?” Ashlyn asked.

  Carl’s eyes narrowed as he shook his head, slowly at first, then emphatically. “We didn’t have a ladder on that side of the building. You can check that with Quinlan yourself, but I don’t think we broke the window.”

  “Okay,” Ashlyn said, making a note. “Do you remember—”

  A uniformed officer stepped between Ashlyn and Carl. “Excuse me. I need to speak to Mr. Parks.”

  “Can’t it wait?” Tain held up his ID again, his eyes narrowing as he glared at the officer, who offered only a fleeting apologetic glance.

  “Mr. Parks, that woman right there—” he pointed to the tall woman in a straight skirt, brown hair pulled back in a ponytail, pacing by a dark sedan—“she needs to speak to you right away.”

  Tain and Ashlyn exchanged a glance. As soon as Carl Parks was out of earshot, Tain turned to the officer.

  “He found a murder victim. A child, and we—”

  The officer held up his hand. “Look, I was just following orders.”

  “You and the Nazis.”

  “Tain!” Ashlyn turned to the officer. “I’m sure that girl’s parents will be thrilled to hear we couldn’t interview the person who found her body because you were doing your job.”

  The officer blew out a deep breath. “Look, I’m just—”

  “Following orders.” Ashlyn watched Carl get into the car with the woman. “What the hell is going on?”

  “Constable Price is taking him home to be with his wife,” the officer said. “She’s been raped.”

  Ashlyn watched the officer walk away, her shock overriding her frustration for
a moment. She couldn’t imagine the hell that Carl Parks was about to find himself in. Talk about a bad day. A fire, finding a girl’s body, having to go home to deal with his wife after she’d been violated.

  And there they were, pissed off because he couldn’t answer their questions. As though their dead kid trumped his raped wife.